Tag: fried chicken

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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night.

My husband, my daughter, and I were spending our last night in Nashville, the last leg of a trip to the Smokies and to my husband’s hometown of Knoxville. After reading about local restaurants and hot spots in a publication provided in our room at the Hermitage, I decided we should have supper at the renowned Loveless Café. It sounded a lot like an Austin favorite of mine, Threadgills, and I was in the mood for comfort food.

My husband was a bit skeptical; he had never heard of Loveless Café and wasn’t crazy about making the 37-39 minute drive in the dark to get there. Plus, it was late; he and our daughter had spent the day at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and he thought it would be best just to try a restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. According to the article I had read, Loveless Café was a pretty amazing place, so I persevered. In the end, he agreed and off we went.

It had started to rain by the time we got downstairs and picked up our rental from the valet, but we weren’t especially worried about the weather at that point. In fact, when I saw a cigar store in a strip center on the way, I insisted we stop and that my husband go in and see about a getting a good stogie, which he did. We figured we had plenty of time to get to the restaurant.

It wasn’t until we left the bright lights of the city and the lightning intensified that my husband started to question whether or not the food at “this place” was worth the drive. The tires on our rental, we realized, were in dire need of replacement, and the lightweight Nissan Rogue was proving difficult to keep on the road, much less in a designated lane.

“This place better be really good,” my husband grumbled, his fingers tightly wrapped around the steering wheel.

“I’m sure it will be,” I said, “and I know that you will get us there safe and sound.”

“Maybe it will even be open by the time we get there,” he replied with an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

Flashback to scenes from Psycho

We drove on through the storm; finally, we saw the restaurant’s 1950s era blue sign, with the words picked out in pink and green neon. With the exception of the color of the neon, it looked exactly like the Bates Motel sign from Psycho.

The resemblance did not end there. The pictures on the restaurant’s home page do not convey the creepiness of the place on a stormy night. Loveless Café was once a motel with a layout similar to the Bates Motel and other travel court motels of the era.

The restaurant sits where the original office would have been, and the original motel rooms flank the restaurant in adjacent lines on the left and right. That night, their dark windows looked forbidding. Just to reassure myself that Loveless Café had no skeletons in its closet, I looked up and to the left for a rundown two story Victorian mansion.

I didn’t see anything looming in the distance, but I still felt much like Janet Leigh as she checked in the Bates Motel as I got out of the car with my daughter and entered the restaurant while my husband parked the car.

Warm, welcoming interior, cheerful and friendly staff

My fears were further allayed by the cheerful, brightly lit lobby of the restaurant with its green wood plank walls covered in framed photographs, polished wood floors, and old fashioned hostess stand. It provided a welcome respite from the stormy night outside. We walked up to the old fashioned hostess stand, which included a display of Loveless Café items for sale, and were greeted by a friendly young woman who asked for the number of people in our party before picking up three menus and leading us into the main dining area.

My daughter and I took our places at a table for four covered in a red and white checked oilcloth and looked around at the paintings and framed photos on the walls. I had told the hostess that my husband wouldn’t be hard to miss, since he is 6’7” and, sure enough, a few minutes later, she escorted him with a smile to our table.

got biscuits?

While we perused the supper menu, our server brought us a plate of warm biscuits, plenty of butter, homemade preserves, and honey before taking our drink orders: iced tea for me, sweet tea for my husband, and a Coke for our daughter who refuses to drink iced tea in any form.

After we laughed at the salad options listed on the menu (after all, who goes to a place like Loveless Café to eat healthy?) my husband opted for the Loveless Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes, and fried okra; I ordered the Country Fried Steak with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Our daughter, ever the picky eater, ordered her two mainstays: chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese.

Our supper soon arrived piping hot; the portions were more than generous. This was not our hometown mainstay, the Luby’s LuAnn Plate: one piece of chicken (white or dark), two sides, and a roll. No – I was faced with a chicken fried steak twice the span of my hand and fingers. My husband was served HALF a chicken. And the food was delicious.

A word about the importance of iced tea

 The iced tea was fresh and perfectly brewed, too. If you didn’t grow up in the south, you may not appreciate the value of a freshly brewed glass of iced tea. Few things in life are more refreshing on a hot day, whether you have just come in from mowing the yard or are enjoying dinner or supper with family and friends.

I learned that all glasses of iced tea are not created equal after living in Minnesota for four years. All too often, I would order iced tea only to be served a cloudy dark tea colored liquid that tasted god-awful. You couldn’t get Coca Cola, either. If you ordered a Coke, you were often told, “We only serve Pepsi.” For some reason, the natives preferred the syrupy, too sweet alternative. Plus, people looked at you funny if you asked for a Coke instead of a “soda” or a “pop.”

Dessert? Yes, please!

 By the time we finished our meal, it was near closing time, so we ordered dessert to go. Loveless Café offers diners an array of southern favorites: Chess Pie, Chocolate Chess Pie, Fudge Pie, Coconut Pie, Pecan Pie, and Banana Pudding (listed as “Puddin’” on the menu). I opted for Banana Puddin’ and my husband chose his favorite, Coconut Pie, after confirming it was Coconut Cream Pie, not Coconut Meringue Pie.

When we left the restaurant, the rain had stopped, so we had a much quicker and less harrowing drive back to our hotel, where we polished off the desserts – having no in-room refrigerator, we were compelled to eat them lest they spoil.

The next day, we flew back to Houston, but not before I bought myself a hot pink “got biscuits?” t-shirt from the hotel gift shop. I love my Loveless Café t-shirt; it’s now eight years old and going strong. Every time I wear it, people always ask me where I got it.

If you are ever in Nashville, take my advice and head on out to Loveless Café. You’ll be glad you did!

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Chicken Sundays

I always associate Sunday with two things: church services and fried chicken. When I was growing up, I spent one month each summer at Heart O’ the Hills Camp for Girls in the Texas Hill Country. On Sundays, we were allowed to wear pajamas, robes, and slippers to breakfast in the dining hall, where waffles, strawberries, whipped cream, and an assortment of fruits and cereals awaited our arrival.

After breakfast, everyone had to change into her “Sunday Whites” – white t-shirt, white shorts, white socks, white tennis shoes. Sunday church services were held on the waterfront along the Guadalupe River.* Sunday dinner was always fried chicken, mashed potatoes, a vegetable, rolls, cream gravy and milk or iced tea. Sunday supper, usually sandwiches and fruit, was always served outdoors on the verdant grass of the Front Lawn.

Fried chicken has always been a Sunday staple in my family, too. It was a tradition in my mother’s family to gather on Sundays at her grandparents’ big house on Avondale in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood and sit down to a home cooked Sunday dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, biscuits, cream gravy, and pie. All of the Barbour children and grandchildren would sit down at the massive mahogany dining room table set with fine china, crystal, and silver flatware.

Now neither my mother nor I can fry chicken to save our lives – believe me, we’ve both tried many times over the years, so fried chicken in my house is always take-out from one of the local franchises.

Today, however, I enjoyed a special treat. My husband drove to Sanger, Texas to Babe’s Chicken Dinner House and brought home fried chicken and all the sides to my mother’s house for Sunday dinner.

Babe’s Chicken Dinner House is a Texas legend. I’ve heard about Babe’s amazing fried chicken for years, as my in-laws live in the DFW area, but for one reason or another, I had never eaten Babe’s chicken until today. Let me tell you: it is the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten in Texas. The only place with better fried chicken is Loveless Café in Nashville, Tennessee. Trust me – I’ll address the wonders of Loveless Café in another post. For now, though, I am going to stick to sharing with you the chicken fried goodness that can be found at Babe’s Chicken Dinner House.

The photo I have posted above does not do justice to the food. It cannot convey the perfect crunch of the skin and the moist, tender meat underneath. It cannot convey the perfectly seasoned taste of the fresh green beans or the “just right” ratio of corn to cream sauce. I will never be able to eat green bean casserole made with canned green beans or creamed corn from a can ever again. The food is just that good.

The buttermilk biscuits and gravy are great, too. These are two other southern staples that you have to learn how to cook at an early age, and neither is easy to master. I gave up on making homemade biscuits long ago; mine wouldn’t rise correctly, or they were too dry, or they didn’t cook all the way through. I do make pretty good “drop biscuits” using Bisquick, but they just aren’t the same. As a result, my poor husband has made do with Pillsbury’s Grands!™ Southern Style Frozen Biscuits for most of our marriage.

People who know us well also know that my husband always swore when he was single that he would only marry me if I could sing American Pie all the way through from start to finish (it’s 8 ½ minutes long) and make decent cream gravy from scratch. I had no trouble meeting the first requirement; as I said in an earlier post, I’ve loved that song since I was 8 years old. Making decent cream gravy is something different altogether.

Part of the problem with making cream gravy is that you need fresh bacon grease to make a roux. The grease has to be just the right temperature before you add the flour. You have to add just a little bit of flour at a time and stir the mixture continuously over low heat. Then you add warm milk to the roux, again stirring continuously to ensure that your gravy is free of lumps – lumpy cream gravy tastes just awful. Finally, you have to add just the right amount of salt and pepper; too much of either ruins the mixture and you have to start the process all over again.

Fortunately, my mother is a very patient person and a good cook. She taught me how to make cream gravy, so I met the second requirement.   I have never achieved the high standards of my husband’s grandmother’s cooking, but he tells me that mine is “good enough.” He eats plenty of it, so I know he’s telling me the truth.

Babe’s Chicken Dinner House also serves southern dessert staples like banana pudding, chocolate meringue pie, coconut meringue pie, lemon meringue pie, and pineapple upside down cake.  We didn’t get dessert from Babe’s today, so I can’t comment on whether or not the restaurant’s versions of these items are really tasty or not.

My mother and I make our own chocolate meringue pie, lemon meringue pie, and butterscotch meringue pie using my maternal grandmother’s recipes. Butterscotch is my favorite, but they are all delicious. I make my own pineapple upside down cake, too. I always baked one for my mother-in-law when she would come to visit; that was her favorite dessert. I use a friend’s recipe to make my own banana pudding. So, as you can see, my mother and I have the dessert front covered!

In today’s fast paced world with family scattered across the country, it’s nice to be able to sit down for Sunday dinner at the table and share family favorites, even if you don’t have the time or, in my case, ability to make them yourself. I know today is a day that I will look back upon fondly, and I’ll always remember eating Babe’s chicken in my mother’s house while my Labrador Retriever gazed longingly at me from her spot just next to my chair.

 *These traditions continue today at Heart O’ the Hills.